This is the way the winter ends . . .

Dwight Peck's personal website

Not with a bang, but with a few stray photos, to clean off the flashdisk

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

It's late April 2010, Kristin has just arrived from the Land of We're Number One, and tomorrow we're off to Georgia for a work/play holiday. So let's amble.

Combe des Amburnex

Flowers newly sprung up, at the top of the Bassins Route des Montagnes near the Bassine farm

Kristin shares our fascination with wood-anthills. You can watch the little guys scurry for hours.

In her "hiking sandals", which let the feet breathe, Kristin goes round the snow patches when possible.

Setting up a brisk pace, I hope . . .

. . . that I can keep up!

The farm at Rionde Dessus

Brisk pace

A sympathetic and understanding person and a tree

Back to Rionde Dessus at the end of the day

Attitude

The farm at La Bassine at the end of the day

Lovely symmetries, newly snowfree. Tomorrow we're off to Georgia.

A work/play excursion to Kobuleti, Georgia (and a stopover in Istanbul)

La Dôle

And now we're back, 5 May 2010, and we're up to search out the baby chamois for this year, who should just be finding their legs and wobbling about now. This is off the front of La Dôle, where a few years ago we came across a herd of the little wobblers, and their moms, and we've been coming back every May since, with much less luck.

Nope, not this year either.

We're on the point of giving up.

They're not down there, that's for sure.

The Chalet de la Dôle

Les Pralets

8 May, Kristin's gone home now, here's Les Pralets at the top of the Bassins Route des Montagnes.

Round through the forest, that's Les Pralets again, I'm testing out the zoom possibilities with my newly acquired Fujifilm AX250.

That's La Sâla

And the Pralets farm and La Sâla, up on the left. The new Fuji's not bad at all, 14 megapixels, 5x optical zoom, and they're basically giving it away.

It does macro flowers, too. Don't ask me what kind of flowers they are.

They're "alpine flowers". That should be enough. (A few years ago, I took a botanist friend hiking on Mont Tendre, and she identified 22 flower species. Where I only saw "alpine flowers".)

And an interesting looking cave down in the combe there. I was pretty happy with the new camera, but a few months later I flipped a kayak and was back on the camera market once again.

Mont Tendre

Next, we're up to Mont Tendre in the rain, 9 May. That was fun.

Crêt de la Neuve

12 May, the observation deck at Crêt de la Neuve. The educational plaque identifying the surrounding mountain vistas is gone. Vandals? It was being renovated, and was back in place when we arrived here again two weeks later.

The cross at Crêt de la Neuve, looks like it needs renovation, too. Perhaps not so easy these days.

There's a movement on in Switzerland to protest against the crosses on top of many Swiss mountains -- it's claimed that they're discriminatory of other religions.

When I see the Swiss flag fluttering, I think "folklore; tradition; color; adornment; pride", and I'm proud of it. When I see the US flag fluttering proudly up and down every lamppost on the street, I think "hegemony; militarism; jingoism; commercial necessity; end of empire". There's discrimination for you.

The Flag and the Cross. (Sounds like a semi-scholarly history of The Crusades.)
(Or of the Vikings, like Robert Ferguson's excellent The Hammer and the Cross)

Crêt de la Neuve bis

Dr Pirri has invited his son to accompagny us, back to the Crêt de la Neuve

16 May, with Joe and his son Nareg

Joe, stolid as always, and Nareg just back from Dubai

End of May, a cow or whatever that thing is, Les Pralets. And with that, Winter 2009-2010 is officially over for me.

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